Microsoft report authors work in several tools, including T-SQL, SSMS, SSRS, and Power BI. Come to this session to learn 60 rapid fire tips that will make you not only be better, but increase you enjoyment working with those tools.

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Performance troubleshooting is a required skill for every DBA. Knowing the deep internals of how a query functions and why SQL Server chose to run it in a certain way is important. Knowing how to design a table or configure a database to squeeze every ounce of performance is our lifeblood.
What if I told you that you may be doing this all wrong? What if all the work and laborious effort put into design or configuration don't improve the situation because the issue was never in SQL to begin with? Truth be told, the biggest differentiator between a good DBA and a great DBA is knowing the hardware and O/S; not just SQL.
Join me as I guide you through troubleshooting SQL Server performance from tip to toe to demonstrate the common performance problems you never knew you had.

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Way, way back in SQL 2008 Microsoft added the capability to store and work with geospatial data types. (Wait...what's this you say?!?) Well, yes...it's been there for quite some time now. You can actually store spatial data in SQL tables (in the form of points, lines and polygons). There are also many powerful, built-in functions that allow the manipulation and calculation of results around this data. This is a powerful, but sadly underused feature of the product given that IoT tends to be so focused around the location of things.
Come to this session to learn about:
? The two elusive data types (geography and geometry)
? T-SQL Spatial routines and functions
? How to load spatial data
? Spatial Indexes - how they work and when they're useful
? Where you can get lots and lots of free spatial data to supplement your existing systems

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Take a dive into SQL on Linux and take on some sea monsters that are lurking in your bathtub. We'll take on the biblical Leviathan and answer: Why learn SQL on Linux anyway? We'll hunt down Moby Dick by sharpening our harpoons, by using tools you're probably already using with on Windows. After getting our feet wet, we'll go after the legendary beast, The Kraken, by leveraging your existing skills with Linux. Don't be eaten alive by Jaws and all the new fast-paced piranha-like features of SQL 2017. You can sail safely into the sunset by making SQL on Linux fun, memorable and learning lasting skills that will future proof your career. If you can install, backup, and restore SQL on Windows in your sleep, then perhaps now is the time to jump in. Be careful, you might get wet in the splash zones so dress accordingly or at least bring weather proof gear. Anchors Away!

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The way you tune your SQL Server workloads are changing. In the past, you would rely on dynamic management views, execution plan cache, and server-side traces or extend events. In SQL Server 2012 we were introduced to Columnstore indexes; In SQL 2014 the cardinality estimator got a huge overhaul. With SQL Server 2016 we were given query store to allow us to get more insight into our performance pains and execution plan changes. SQL Server 2017 gave us Automatic Tuning and Adaptive Query Processing to help automate performance improvements. In this session, we will harness the ways you improve performance into the new so you can automate the pain away and spend more time identifying and tuning pain points that cannot be automated.

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Discover the ways Azure transforms AI and Predictive Analytics making it easier and more accessible through services like Azure Machine Learning and pre-built Cognitive Services, while also supporting custom development and deep-learning.

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Learn about Azure SQL Data Warehouse (SQL DW) which is a fully managed elastic database built for data warehouse workloads supporting up to petabytes of data. It has unique features like disaggregated compute and storage allowing customers to be able to utilize the service to match their diverse needs. In this session, we take a look at the architecture of SQL DW and features such as elastic scale (grow, shrink, and pause) and Polybase and how you take advantage of them for your data warehousing solution.

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If you are going to do anything with data you are going to need to learn how to query data. And the language to query the majority of those systems is through SQL (Structured Query Language). The pull data from any systems you are going to be relying on the Select statement. The features in the statement may vary slightly from platform to platform, but the core capabilities are the same.
In this session, we will dive deep in to the SELECT statement as the window to getting your data. In this session, we will be using one platform, but the lessons learned here will be applicable to querying any system that supports a SQL language interface. This session will cover things like querying, joins, functions, aggregation, sub queries, and much more. This session will give you the foundation to start analyzing data in any database system.

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Everyone wants a great job that they enjoy, but few of us know how to take charge of our career. Learn why it's important to raise your profile in today's highly competitive world where there are often more candidates than positions for great jobs. This session will help you build a strong brand that allows you to attract potential employers or clients and start to convince them ahead of time that you are the person they want to hire.

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Many organizations have over- or under-utilized assets in their cloud infrastructure. While running infrastructure in the cloud can yield many benefits in terms of agility and innovation, it can also lead to increased costs. In this session we will walk you through the process of rightsizing, as well as how to take advantage of Reserved Instances once your infrastructure is running efficiently. This session will be beneficial for anyone using AWS, Azure, or both!

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Have you ever had a manager standing over your shoulder, wanting to know why a server is running slowly? Or if a server can handle additional workload? What information would you use to answer these questions? How would you share this information with your manager? If only you had performance metrics from your existing servers to answer these questions.
In this session, we will be combining three open source tools (Telegraf, InfluxDB, and Grafana) into an inexpensive system that collects performance metrics you can use to troubleshoot and answer important questions about your SQL Server instances, including your SQL Server on Linux instances. We will learn what data to collect, how to use the tools mentioned to collect that data and then we'll put it all together in an interactive dashboard for easy visualization.

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In today’s world reporting and analytics are no longer focused exclusively on internal data from transactional systems and the data warehouse.
Mashups using data from partners, commercial and public sources are fast becoming the new normal.
Do you have a csv file too big to open, is a non-windows format or generates errors on import or opening?
Need to determine the quality of a file downloaded from the internet or supplied by another party?
In this presentation we will review tools to examine/repair schema issues and explore Power BI Desktop features that provide insights into your datasets along with the M language for building mashups and data models.

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When called in to diagnose a performance issue what are the 1st things you review? Many DBAs and developers make the mistake of diving straight into the code looking for an answer. However, often times the solution is not in the code but rather in the overall environment. Environmental troubleshooting is often a quick and overlooked method for discovering and configuring SQL Server to perform at a higher level without the need for application change controls.
In this session we will discuss both performance pitfalls and optimizations that can be made to the system outside of code changes. We will diagnose configurations commonly misapplied and review best practices in SQL Server, Windows Server, and VMware!

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect on May 25, 2018 heralds a new era of enhanced personal privacy rights and adds additional duty to companies for protecting data. However, it’s not just about protecting the privacy of personal data of EU citizens. Data breaches such as at Target, Equifax, Uber and many others, result in loss of customers, loss of profits and cost executive jobs. A survey by Forrester reveals that 74% of individuals are ready to switch to a competitor if their bank or insurer suffers a data breach. Security and Privacy capabilities ranks as the number 1 initiative by 55% of organizations in a 2017 Customer Priorities & Journey Survey.
In this session, we will discuss all things data protection with the Microsoft Data Platform. Whether it is to comply with the requirements of GDPR or ensuring that your data is the most secure it can be.

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Powershell wants to be your friend - your very powerful friend. In this session we will go over some Powershell basics that will help get you started as well as some known "gotchas" when working in Powershell. This is a beginner session - no Powershell experience necessary. WARNING: You may get warm-fuzzies about Powershell by attending this session.

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A general discussion about storage and how it affects DBA's. We will discuss how to monitor for performance as well. We will also discuss what DBA's need to consider when talking to their storage administrators.

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In a cloudy, virtualized world where we have less physical deployments of SQL Server, those responsible for SQL Server still need to understand basic infrastructure concepts whether you are deploying on Windows Server or Linux. Without them, your VMs and IaaS deployments will not scale, will underperform, and most likely will have poor availability. This session will cover the basics of what you need to know whether you are deploying SQL Server on premises or in the public cloud to go from SQL Server zero to SQL Server hero and be able to have better working relationships with the other administrators in your organization.

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We all love Power BI and its abilities to show data insights through its interface. But Power BI has its limits when it comes to massive data ingestion and near real time dashboards. In this presentation we will evaluate some out of the box solutions to render metrics and KPIs from massive loads that extrapolates Power BI limits.

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In one small step, SQL Server 2016 has taken a giant leap...to JSON! In this session, we'll launch a probe into a JSON data file containing profiles of NASA astronauts using new JSON T-SQL functions in SQL Server. With each astronaut we meet, we'll learn to validate, read, and manipulate "unstructured" JSON data. We'll get The Right Stuff to start developing, no previous JSON experience required. Let's go where NoSQL has gone before!
Prerequisites:
You should have experience writing queries in T-SQL. No previous knowledge of JSON is needed.